Tracking climate change? Use the daily highs

Above, examples from Las Vegas illustrate the issue, but aren’t part of the original paper. Source: NWS WSFO, Las Vegas. NV.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (April 29, 2016) — Scientists using long-term surface temperature data to track climate change caused by greenhouse gases would be best served using only daily high temperature readings without the nighttime lows, according to new research at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Using temperature data from Alabama going back to 1883, scientists in UAH’s Earth System Science Center developed and tested various methods for creating stable, reliable long-term climate datasets for three portions of inland Alabama.

In addition to creating some arcane mathematical tools useful for creating climate datasets, the team also found daytime high temperature data is less likely to be contaminated by surface issues — such as deforestation, construction, paving and irrigation — than nighttime low temperatures.

“If you change the surface, say if you add buildings or warmer asphalt, you can enhance night time mixing of the lower atmosphere,” said John Christy, the ESSC director and a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at UAH. “That creates a warming caused by vertical mixing rather than changes in greenhouse gases.”

Summer high temperatures are particularly useful in this regard, because summer temperatures tend to be more stable, while cold season temperatures are subject to larger swings due to natural variability. These often wild swings in temperature introduce “noise” into the data, which can mask long-term trends and their causes.

Results of this research were published recently in the American Meteorological Society’s “Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.”

Basically, under pristine natural conditions, in most places a cool layer of air forms close to the ground after the sun sets. This layer of denser, cooler air creates a boundary layer that keeps out warmer air in the deep layer of the atmosphere above it.

Then people move in. People tend to do all sorts of things that mess with the local climate. Breezes blowing around buildings can cause nighttime turbulence, breaking apart the cool boundary layer. Streets, parking lots and rooftops absorb heat during the day and release it into the atmosphere at night, also causing turbulence. Irrigation increases dry soil’s ability to hold heat and releases a powerful greenhouse gas (water vapor) into the lowest levels of the atmosphere over dry and desert areas.

That’s the short list.

When the cool layer of air near the surface is disturbed, warmer air aloft is drawn down to the surface. All of those cause real changes in the local climate, raising local surface temperatures, especially at night, by amounts large enough to be noticed both by weather station thermometers and by people living in some of those areas.

But none of those changes has anything to do with widespread climate change in the deep atmosphere over large areas of the globe, such as might be seen if caused by increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“Over time this might look like warming or an accumulation of heat in the temperature record, but this temperature change is only caused by the redistribution of warmer air that has always been there, just not at the surface,” said Richard McNider, a distinguished professor of science at UAH.

So how can climatologists use existing long-term surface temperature records to accurately track the potential effects of enhanced CO2? Take the nighttime boundary layer (and all of the things we do to interfere with it) out of play, say Christy and McNider.

Fig. 8. Time series of the JJA TMax average of the median time series of the three metropolitan regions for reconstructions in the 80-km radius.

“We prefer to take temperature measurements in the deep layer of the atmosphere, which is why we use instruments on satellites,” Christy said. “But the satellite data only goes back to the last few days of 1978. We use the surface record because it is longer, and we really want to look at data that goes back much further than 1978. “Because of the natural mixing of the atmosphere caused by daytime heating, daily maximum temperatures are the best surface data to use to look at temperatures in the deep atmosphere. At the surface, the daytime maximum temperature just represents more air than the nighttime low.”

The new temperature datasets extend the existing climatology for three regions of interior Alabama (around Montgomery, Birmingham and Huntsville) by a dozen summers, all the way back to 1883. Summers in Alabama have been cooling, especially since 1954. Interior Alabama’s ten coolest summers were after 1960, with most of those after 1990. As might be expected given that cooling, climate models individually and in groups do a poor job of modeling the state’s long-term temperature and rainfall changes since 1883.

The researchers conclude the models — the same models widely used to forecast climate change — show “no skill” in explaining long-term changes since 1883.

Time Series Construction of Summer Surface Temperatures for Alabama, 1883–2014, and Comparisons with Tropospheric Temperature and Climate Model Simulations

Three time series of average summer [June–August (JJA)] daily maximum temperature (TMax) are developed for three interior regions of Alabama from stations with varying periods of record and unknown inhomogeneities. The time frame is 1883–2014. Inhomogeneities for each station’s time series are determined from pairwise comparisons with no use of station metadata other than location. The time series for the three adjoining regions are constructed separately and are then combined as a whole assuming trends over 132 yr will have little spatial variation either intraregionally or interregionally for these spatial scales. Varying the parameters of the construction methodology creates 333 time series with a central trend value based on the largest group of stations of −0.07°C decade−1with a best-guess estimate of measurement uncertainty from −0.12° to −0.02°C decade−1. This best-guess result is insignificantly different (0.01°C decade−1) from a similar regional calculation using NOAA’s divisional dataset based on daily data from the Global Historical Climatology Network (nClimDiv) beginning in 1895. Summer TMax is a better proxy, when compared with daily minimum temperature and thus daily average temperature, for the deeper tropospheric temperature (where the enhanced greenhouse signal is maximized) as a result of afternoon convective mixing. Thus, TMax more closely represents a critical climate parameter: atmospheric heat content. Comparison between JJA TMax and deep tropospheric temperature anomalies indicates modest agreement (r2 = 0.51) for interior Alabama while agreement for the conterminous United States as given by TMax from the nClimDiv dataset is much better (r2 = 0.86). Seventy-seven CMIP5 climate model runs are examined for Alabama and indicate no skill at replicating long-term temperature and precipitation changes since 1895.

259 thoughts on “Tracking climate change? Use the daily highs”

“When the cool layer of air near the surface is disturbed, warmer air aloft is drawn down to the surface.”
Buzzzzz Wrong!!
Warm or “cool layer” or any “disturbed” fragment of your imagination that can invent scenarios about air is flawed.
Pressure differences in the atmosphere produce warm and cool air. you seem to suggest to me that (correct me if I’m wrong) warm and cold air come from ‘thin air’ so to speak, and that warm air floats about on a planetary scale, my god man?
“warm air blows cold air about” That’s all I heard 🙂

Boundary layers are hard for many people to understand. My work early in my career with military aircraft made me research boundary layers as they can wreck havoc on landing pattern calculations. Plane gets into the boundary layer and suddenly float instead of settling in. On climbout there can be a significant bump as one leaves the boundary layer and enters the air above. Lift changes significantly sometimes, but luckily we were always going fast enough to have plenty of surplus lift available. The pilots always laughed at me when I asked them about it. “You just get used to it in training” was the most common reply. I was a science trained avionics guy, so I always wanted to measure these common things to get my head around their parameters.
Hovercraft rely on creating a boundary layer at the edges of the skirt or else all the lift would die.

Anyone who flies model aircraft at sunset learns about boundary layers.
AS the sun goes down the earth cools off faster than the air above, and at a given point the temperatures are roughly the same, and thermal activity ceases, and so does surface wind.
Flying in and out of that layer is ‘interesting’

As a motorcycle rider I can assure you the cool layer exists. Sometimes in hilly areas you cimb out then drop back into the cold layer. Only at night.
Similarly, wind and turbulence does raise the temperature via mixing. That is why orange orchards have big propellers fired up on cold night. Mixing prevents the frost damage.
Similarly, I always looked forward to reaching a town. Several degrees warmer! Any night rider can tell you UHI is grossly under estimated.

Did you skip this part?
“….Breezes blowing around buildings can cause nighttime turbulence, breaking apart the cool boundary layer. Streets, parking lots and rooftops absorb heat during the day and release it into the atmosphere at night, also causing turbulence. Irrigation increases dry soil’s ability to hold heat and releases a powerful greenhouse gas (water vapor) into the lowest levels of the atmosphere over dry and desert areas…”
The first few sentences of that paragraph should satisfy your desires to focus on atmospheric pressure. You won’t have breezes or turbulence without pressure differences. Fair enough?

Cool air at ground when clear from radiation loss (surely you’ve seen frost on car windows when the air temp was above freezing-if not then can’t help). Wind from hotter surfaces would cause mixing and temperature differentials.

Sparks,
This is a well described meteorological phenomenon, and goes by the name of Katabatic wind. It occurs only at night, as a result of the lower specific heat of dry soil compared to air. Essentially, dry soil loses heat more quickly than air, but the air in direct contact with the soil (ie the boundary layer) also cools quickly as it maintains thermal equilibrium with the soil. This cool air, being more dense, then flows downhill – resulting in the katabatic wind phenomenon.
However, any existing wind effect usually results in too much atmospheric mixing for the katabatic wind to form. Which is why this phenomenon usually only occurs on very still nights.
Man made surfaces like concrete, brick and ashphalt have specific heats almost the same as air, so do not generate this effect. Then, any large structures will result in vertical mixing of the katabatic wind, which again will abate its affect. So effectively, this is the night time equivalent of the urban heat island.

Right, those thermals I rise in in a glider are caused by pressure. Seriously, come back if you can entertain the possibility that you are not the cleverest person in the world just because you have a belief.

haha listen to yourself… ‘hot air thermals’ are produced by pressure differences… Seriously?? I jumped out of a plane and didn’t notice anything but my ears popping lol but enjoy you’re warm air theory 🙂

Pressure differences in the atmosphere produce warm and cool air
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you have it backwards. lows are regions of rising (warm-lighter) air. highs are regions of descending (cold-heavier) air.

E.MSmith is it warm and cold air or pressure differences? When you’re riding your bike being awesome, you feel warm and cool air when you ride through the changes (“boundary layers”) , what you don’t notice is the changes in pressure that bring about the temperature you feel, are you saying ‘hot or cold air’ causes pressure change? lmao

it is very interesting how one could make several mutually contradictory arguments from the graphs. By one set, Las Vegas is warming at a fairly regular rate. By another set, it was warmer in the 1940’s. Kudos to UAH.

DB adds to every conversation in which he participates, and does so in about as calm and respectful and thorough way humanly possible, even while enduring merrily the worst of the trolls, and the ridiculous garbage they spew all over everything they get near.

J. Philip Peterson April 29, 2016 at 6:34 pm
“Willard, you really run a despicable blog”
Well perhaps you may believe that. after all he is allowing cretins like sparks and yourself to post here.
Anthony has given you the benefit of the doubt, that you could carry on a intelligent conversation in a adult fashion.
And what do you do with the opportunity> Petty insults. with unsophisticated and crude attempts of self grandeur.
So tell me Gents what has been happening in Europe and North and South America this last week and how it relates to the to the present discussion of temperatures?
michael

“Cretins like sparks”? really?? You don’t now me sir… Intellectually I will wipe the floor with you, I am patient, I work hard and enjoy our discussions here, My comments are either intended with humour or with specific information, it is ‘Cretins’ like you who chose to read into comments by me and read what you want and find malice intent. [rest pruned. .mod] 🙂

Tom, I don’t see any contradiction in these graphs. To make an honest argument, the graphs need to be considered together. It seems to me to prove what people on this blog have said before, that any “greenhouse” effect on temperatures would simply keep the heat of the day from radiating out to space a little longer. That would mean the high temperatures of the day would take longer to decay without actually being any higher than usual. That would make the night readings average warmer. This is why even though the media claims the future will be “scorching” and constantly setting new heat records, the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth was back in 1913 and remains the record today. The highs aren’t getting higher, but the lows are. And I like it that way.

” The highs aren’t getting higher, but the lows are.”
Which leads me to wonder why the highs aren’t going up, since the day starts out a bit warmer . . Less water shed through dew/frost, so requiring a bit more sun/time to warm surface air?

“But the satellite data only goes back to the last few days of 1978. We use the surface record because it is longer, and we really want to look at data that goes back much further than 1978. “Because of the natural mixing of the atmosphere caused by daytime heating, daily maximum temperatures are the best surface data to use to look at temperatures in the deep atmosphere. At the surface, the daytime maximum temperature just represents more air than the nighttime low.”
The new temperature datasets extend the existing climatology for three regions of interior Alabama (around Montgomery, Birmingham and Huntsville) by a dozen summers, all the way back to 1883.

This had me scratching my head. 1978 to 1883 is a great deal more than a dozen years. What am I missing? Did they extend the surface record back from 1895? If so, how?

I can tell y’all here and now that if you are going to look only at historical LST Tmax, you have a problem right off the bat. And that problem is the ubiquitous CRS equipment.
Tmax trends (both up and down) are severely exaggerated by Stevenson Screens (CRS), by over 100%. Compare CRS with PRT (especially), MMTS, or ASOS, and it sticks out like a fish in a tree. CRS Tmin trends, OTOH, are lowballed. You have to add ~50% to trend (up or down) to get a result consistent with the other equipment.
The net overall effect is a ~25% positive exaggeration of Tmean trend. (Whether an individual CRS is highballing or lowballing Tmean depends entirely on what the Tmax and Tmin trends are for the station in question.)
But watch that Tmax! Look at that graph. Note the large Tmax swings. Note also the much lower swings in Tmin. At least some of that will be due to CRS equipment bias.

Stevenson Screens get far warmer in sunlight than a thermometer on a easterly facing wall on a modern site in the 1800’s. even today it is true, and it’s testable, every contrarians nightmare unfortunately, or I’d be your evil overlord by now. A nice and friendly one, more of an overlord than evil. Stevenson Screens, is just another phrase for a box, a box is far warmer than anything ever used to measure temperature. realistically.

“Stevenson Screens get far warmer in sunlight than a thermometer on a easterly facing wall on a modern site in the 1800’s.”
I’ve started looking on google scholar regarding the possible temperature bias of Stevenson Screens. This is one of my first findings:
“HISTORICAL THERMOMETER EXPOSURES IN AUSTRALIA, Nicholls et al 1996”
From the abstract: “There is also evidence, from a long-running comparision at Adelaide, that mean temperatures in a Stevenson screen are lower than in an open stand in Australian conditions.” This would seem to contradict what you are saying.

In Adelaide, Australia? have you no fken common sense? is it like 3 for a pound here this evening? of course temperatures are going to be lower “the box” obviously acts as a shade, are they trying to suggest that adjustments should be made for a box in the northern hemisphere, based on a box from the southern hemisphere?

I cannot remember the reference, but I once read a paper that suggested that measured temperatures could increase by 0.3 to 0.5 deg C due to simply to degradation of Stevenson Screens. With degradation, the albedo changes.
In fact there can be changes in the order of 0.2 degC simply as a consequence of the type of white paint used.
I am sure that our host knows about the consequence of Stevenson Screen degradation, and indeed the impact of different types of white paint.
Since degradation will be a factor of location, environmental conditions, maintainance etc, there is no reason to presume that it will be equally distributed. This fact alone, renders the land based record useless for scientific purposes where one is seeking to identify changes of a few tenths of degree, and when these happened etc.

Done it myself, actually. Part of the surface stations project. Hubbard and Lin suggested looking at CRS but I don’t think anyone actually did.
Degradation does have an effect, but I think the main thing is that the box itself is a heat sink and the LiG is attached to it.

I bounce back and forth as to the utility of ground level low temperatures. On one hand, looking at the whole atmosphere is important, and the temperature for much of the day reflects that. Once the morning inversion burns off, then sunlight can bring the entire air column into vertical mixing and one temperature measurement covers a lot of volume.
On the other hand, ground level is where people, animals, and crops live. The crops killed in 1816 in New England were generally killed by cold morning air. Radiational cooling is important! Radiational cooling in Las Vegas is confusing, as it’s a mix of cooling slowed by greenhouses gases, but more importantly slowed by land use changes, urbanization in this case.
I’m afraid we’re stuck with both for the indefinite future. As long as we use them well, they’ll be useful.

I did not think that the article was making the point that low temps, nighttime temps, or ground level temps are unimportant, but that one can track changes over time better and more accurately by using daytime temps, and in particular, daytime high temps.
Many of us here have the belief that nothing unusual is happening recently with the temperature, but that many of the data sets are corrupted by UHI and data tampering.
The daytime graph shows us what Tony Heller has been pointing out for a very long time…that the most recent years are not unusually hot.
Most if not all of any recent increases are because it is less cold at night.
As anyone who has spent a lot of time outside at night observing temps in various locations over a small area can attest, buildings and pavement of any sort have a profound influence on how much and how fast it cools once the sun has set. The more dramatic the nighttime cooling, the bigger the difference in temps near any structures or paving. The difference is most dramatic on clear and windless nights with low humidity, when cooling is most rapid.
These are also the times when damage to crops tends to occur.

I don’t really argue with your assessment of these data trends. The rising trend of nighttime temps immediately makes me think UHI effect. However, there does seem to have been a strong trend of warmer temperatures in the Arctic and down to about 50 degrees latitude. I think there is every likelihood that this is related to a longer range weather trend. Not climate, which implies some sort of “paradigm change”, but an aspect of global weather patterns we don’t understand. I personally feel that AGW is based on simplistic assumptions and has become a religion that obstructs and attacks good science.

The situation in the Arctic may be mostly due to cyclic changes in ocean currents.
More heat transported to the Arctic, where it is quickly radiated to space, and less is available for the rest of the Earth.

AGW is based on simplistic assumptions and has become a religion that obstructs and attacks good science.
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the status quo in all human activity suffers from this fault. For example
1. eating animal fat is bad for you
Or current crisis in diabetes and obesity is a direct result of this faulty belief, based on faulty science.
Humans have been eating animal fat for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. those humans that were not genetically able to eat animal fat have long since been eliminated from the gene pool. It is illogical to conclude that something that we are genetically selected to eat would be harmful.
It is much more likely that the crisis in heart attacks was caused by something introduced into the diet around the time the crisis first began, somewhere around WWII. The likely suspect is artificial foods introduced to deal with WWII shortages, such as hydrogenated vegetable oil that was introduced to replace animal fats.
It has taken 70 years for science to begin to recognize that perhaps they got it wrong. That the problem was not animal fats, it was the artificial fats introduced to replace animal fats that were the problem. In the meanwhile people switched from eating fats to eating carbs, and they have ballooned in size. Just like cattle that are fed on grain. A pasture fed steer (grade B) enters the feed lot around 800 pounds. 6 months later, fed a diet of grain, they leave the feed lot weighing 1600 pounds and enter the slaughter house.
Why should humans fed a diet of mostly grain be any different?

It is perfectly obvious that you are just on a trolling expedition here, Spasms.
Your jokes (if that is what you are attempting) are not funny, and you have added zero to any conversation.
You blanket dismissal of the work of the UHA scientists really told your whole story.
Maybe try upping your game, or is your plan to be so tiresomely bereft of any positive contribution that everyone turns off their machine and watches TV instead?

micro6500 bless you for that comment. If you think it’s CO2 then the desert should be your laboratory. Unless you can reduce the confounding variables (e.g. water vapor) the rest of the signal is lost to noise. And nowhere near any oceans or large bodies of water.
A couple of really well calibrated sites should be able to bound the CO2 effect. Then start the calculations. Over years, I’ve not seen anyone wanting to start from the alleged first principles. Always confirmation bias all the way down.

I don’t understand why we’re wasting our time on the so-called Climate Change. Even under some of the most dire predictions, global warming present no real danger to our species. Inconvenience, most definitely, but not life-threatening. On the other hand, I’ve just finished reading D.F,’s novel “SHIELD OF LIFE”. And although the author has presented the real frightening facts in a futuristic, action-pack story form, his conclusions and predictions of the danger to mankind was quite clear, and very close at-hand.

Sparks: – Shield of Life presents the most likely ecological conditions, beginning in about 50 years. Condition developed because of our neglect. And unless corrected within a couple of decades, our spices and perhaps much of life on earth is doomed. Read the book (it’s a fast reading one) and decide for yourself.

After I read “The Limits to Growth” around 1971, I read Brian Aldiss’s “Greybeard.” Bad combination! Fortunately, both remained fiction. Is there much reason for anything in “Shield of Life” (all caps) to become true?

In 60+ years I’m yet to see a single prediction of disaster come true. Not 1. I’ve heard millions of predictions of disaster. You see a couple every day in the headlines. They always read the same:
“Change your ways or the earth will end.” says Great Authority.
Yet of the millions of predictions, claiming the end was at hand, it all turned out to be a great nonsense. A bunch of people running around flapping their arms, yet unable to fly.

the most likely ecological conditions, beginning in about 50 years.
===============
conveniently the author will likely be dead by then and won’t have to suffer the abuse that results from yet another failed prediction.
it is those pesky predictions of what is going to happen in 5, 10, or 20 years that are the big problem. Gore and the Arctic, Hansen and sea levels.
They forgot the golden rule. Never predict any disaster that might occur I your lifetime, because almost certainly you will be made to look the fool. Predict the end of the world to occur after your death. If you are wrong, you won’t have to suffer the abuse. And if you are right, it won’t matter anyways.

ferdberple: – Actually “Shield of Life” deals with the thinning (depleting) of the Ozone Layer, and we all know what will happen when that layer is too thin.
Sadly, the process of ozone depleting is an on going process, because most of the gasses (CFC etc.) responsible for the ‘depletion’ takes about 30 to 60 years to reach the ‘ozone layer’ and begin the process of destruction, which is the reason (I believe) the author provided for only 20 more year or so, to do something about fixing the problem, before it becomes too late.
Earth underwent numerous warming periods, and our species survived, That will not happen once the Ozone Layer is sufficiently depleted.
I happen to believe that we should pay more attention, and resources, to the issue of ozone depletion than to climate change.
Be that as it may, I recommend that you read the book (or e-book) for yourself and make up your own mind.http://www.amazon.com/Shield-Life-Dan-Frishling-ebook/dp/B019ZVX08S/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1453865226&sr=1-2

Roy, your theory is flawed from the start, People care for their environments they find themselves in, the planet we live on is unforgiving and we have evolved to accept how harsh life can be, but people are really nice (except civil servants, they’re just doing a job”) 🙂

Sparks: – If people cared for their environment they would have already done something to halt the depletion of the ozone layer. Unfortunately, a depleting/thinning layer (which is currently underway) is unforgiving to all life on earth. And the fact that our leaders are not even discussing the subject scares me, and should scare anyone that does a research on the subject.
I suspect that opening the eyes of his readers was the real aim of the author of “Shield of Life”!

And it says nothing about how some humans are homeless living a miserable life. but but but structures and Human [Clean language please. -ModE] Habitation are the scourge of the world… again Menicholas, you live in a fantasy world on a planet where real people live, we care for and die for each other and make careful sober decisions with consideration for our environment,

I have not seen a formal analysis (like this paper) but I have read a number of statements along the line of “most of the increase occurs in winter nights”.
This is a key reason why all of the modeling studies of impacts (i.e. extinctions, crop yields) are GIGO. There has been little increase in stressors (hotter summer days).

And nothing about the length of time the high remains high or the length of time it stayed cooler. Le Bottom Line is that there is no continuity. Without continuity, it’s hard to compare anything with precision. We only have an approximation. And with that the degree of uncertainty increases. The plus/minus becomes larger. Filled in over hundreds of stations, and proxies for the rest.

The Average Annual Maximum Temperature for Las Vegas is very interesting. It looks like some type of thermostat is controlling the temperature and holding it to near 81F. You can also see the 1982 and 1997 El Ninos as dips in the temperature; the mid 70s La Nina is also seen as an increase. Is there some mechanism that would limit maximum temperature and do other locations have similar limits on maximum temperatures?

I would guess that the daytime temperature is really all about radiation from the ground to a clear sky vis as vis incoming solar radiation.
Bear in mind that CO2 is implicated mostly in reducing net night-time radiation.
I.e. the CO2 ‘model’ implies less cold, not more heat. As it were.
However that is pretty much what urban development implies as well.
AUW – Anthropogenic Urban Warming – is an established fact

I was going to say that the factors I can think of that limit how hot it can get are such things as the length of day and the sun angle, how humid it is and hence the specific heat of the air (dryer air warming more for a given energy input of course), clouds or lack of them (related of course but not exactly the same as humidity), and whether the air is ascending or descending and at what rate (with strong high pressure suppressing convection and also causing compressional warming of the descending air).
Tall mountains blocking the sun all morning and/or afternoon would have some local effects as well it would seem.
Just off da top o’ me ‘ead.

The tropopause height is variable by season due to the intensity of the sun. Higher in summer, you can calculate the surface temp by using the lapse rate from that higher point.
Thus, max temp is limited by this max height. Any moisture lowers the lapse rate so very dry in summer is the limit and tropopause height is the mechanism.
Robinson & Catling accurately calculated temps for any gaseous planet by my identifying the tropopause height and calculating down from there.
Contrary to all the AGW lunacy, the atmosphere cools the earth. There is no such thing as a “greenhouse” gas. There are radiative gases, but they do not change the lapse rate.
One day this CO2 charade is going to end.

The 33C so called “greenhouse effect” is easily calculated without regard to GHG.
The wet air lapse rate is 6.4C per Km. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate
The center of mass of the atmosphere is approximately 5 km. http://www.ssag.sk/files/Atmosphere.pdf
5 km X 6.4 C per km = 32C
As can be seen, the “greenhouse” effect can be calculated directly from the gravitational constant, the condensation rate of water (WALR) and the mass of the atmosphere. This holds for any planet, regardless of CO2 concentrations.

They failed to show the quantitative difference between people pulling down hot air and the heat being emitted from the asphalt etc when people are in bed, not milling around outside pulling down hot air. So how ca they claim there is a significant effect from this milling around at night?
Where’s the evidence?
Of course there’s even more milling around in the daytime (maximum temperature time) so it’s even harder to separate the two.

“Boundary layers are hard for many people to understand.”
Well… all one needs to do is observe some pelicans flying over water (they do that a lot). Notice how they tend to stay close to the surface of the water (3-10 feet). They learned a long time ago about “Boundary Layers”. When they are close to the water surface the air forced down by their wing flaps/strokes gets reflected (bounced, reverberated, returned, etc. etc.) “right back at ya” and thus make the effort to fly less.
Albatrosses have also mastered this skill, they glide from wave top to wave top just above the surface and use the boundary layer air to push themselves upward without any wing beats. Quite a sight to see, a Wandering Albatross (largest wingspan of any extant bird, approaching 12 feet) slowly gliding from one wave top to the next with no energy required by adding wing beats (flaps, strokes, etc.).
Interesting analyses, just reinforces yet again how difficult it is to measure the temperature of any point in space above a solid object as large as the Earth, especially when it is surrounded by a variety of gases some of which also interact with radiant energy flowing through the system.
Cheers, KevinK.

KevinK,
The earlier aviation discussion about boundary layer mixed up two different concepts: boundary layer effect and ground effect. In aviation, the boundary layer is measured in millimeters.
Ground effect generally occurs at or below a height that is equivalent to the wing span of a bird or aircraft. What you have observed about birds in flight is ground effect, not a boundary layer effect. Ground effect increases lift and decreases drag, and consequently uses much less energy, which is why water birds like albatrosses and pelicans enjoy flying close to the water.

Good point. All of this discussion isn’t referring to ‘boundary layers’ in the aviation sense, which as you have stated are millimetre-scale effects on actual aerofoils, and quite a different matter. If we substitute ‘ground layer’ for boundary layer, we are back on track. Back to aviation, quite a lot of work has been done on low flying WIGE (wing-in-ground-effect) aerodynamics which is itself fascinating, though marginal to the present discussion.

the boundary layer is measured in millimeters.
That is dependent on your definition., and the speed and viscosity of the medium.
IN fluid mechanics terms, you are correct, that it’s a few millimetres at most, but there is another term:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundary_layer
That applies in meteorological terms, and that’s the area of the atmosphere where wind speed is lower by dint of proximity to the ground and objects therein.

when learning to fly quads the ground effect helps a lot. very slowly increase power until the quad just leaves the ground. if you have done it slowly enough the quad will stop rising once it is about the same height off the ground as it is wide. now, leaving the power unchanged, slowly move the quad forward and back, side to side until you master the steering.
once the steering is mastered, you can now increase power and the fun will really begin. the biggest problem in first learning to fly quads (or RC helicopters) is lag time on the throttle. By the time you think and react to changes in altitude it is too late. You will overcompensate due to reaction lag time, and the quad will rocket into the air and them come crashing back to earth. So best to learn steering first, before you try altitude control.

Don’t confuse boundary layer with ground effect. They are not the same thing.
Ground effect is the aerodynamic area where the physics of flying in an ‘infinite’ volume of air break down, because of the proximity of the ground.
Boundary layers is the area near a solid object where fluid flow over it is affected by it and is slower than it is further way.
Ground effect is within a few feet, but the boundary layer extends up to maybe a couple of hundred or more.
You will encounter ground effect when dealing with racing cars,. hovercraft,. ekranoplanes and indeed landing a normal aircraft just before touchdown.
But boundary layer effect is most noticeable at dusk (or dawn) when you get a ‘lull’ in the prevailing wind and an absence of gusts.
This is down to cessation of thermal activity as the ground and air temporarily achieve the same temperature,.
At other times it still exists – wind speeds right near the ground are lower than a few hundred feet up, and it is in fact a major issue in wind turbine design, as the blades move from a low speed regime near the ground to high speed regimes higher up, and this generates asymmetric stresses on the blades and bearings.
The point is that thermal activity near the ground tends to equalise temperature near the ground with the ground. And things that affect or disrupt it will allow more of a differential.

I had thought that what was being referenced in the article was more of an inversion layer, or what we refer to in the lake management industry as a thermocline…a boundary between two different temperatures in the given medium.
When cool and thus more dense air sits below warmer air, there tends to be little mixing at the boundary of the parcels involved, given that the air is relatively still and undisturbed.
Differences in humidly can also cause of contribute to the affect, and the cut-off point when fog forms in one of the parcels can be sharp and abrupt…like someone cut it with a knife.
I am not an aviator, so I am not too familiar with the terms as applied in that avocation, although the descriptions here are illuminating.
The ground effect is easy to understand…near the ground, the wings cannot just push air out of the way like in open flight, because there is no where for the air to go, so it must compress and hence acts more or less like a spring.

Lived in vegas for 10 years, its as good barometer sample as any. Reason you see averages going up is heat island effect, nothing else.
Yes, overall highs are down because the planet has been cooling since 1998

The point is simple. The data for all 12 months exists.
How many seasons did they look at?
Why not look at other months.
Etc.
Also. They have developed but not independently tested an adjustment methodology.
Good science would require you to compare multiple adjustment methods. And to test it on synthetic data.
They did neither.
So you have a paper that violates the mcintyre standard.
If you introduce a new method you should test the method first. As part of a methods paper.

Summer TMax is a better proxy, when compared with daily minimum temperature and thus daily average temperature, for the deeper tropospheric temperature (where the enhanced greenhouse signal is maximized) as a result of afternoon convective mixing. Thus, TMax more closely represents a critical climate parameter: atmospheric heat content. Comparison between JJA TMax and deep tropospheric temperature anomalies indicates modest agreement (r2 = 0.51) for interior Alabama while agreement for the conterminous United States as given by TMax from the nClimDiv dataset is much better (r2 = 0.86).

Vegas does seem to be an excellent example, if not least because before Bugsy Segal blew into town and built his hotel, it was little more than a dusty crossroads gas stop in the middle of nowhere.
And since then, the acceleration in growth has been steady and rapid.

Wasn’t it a series of water meadows (Vegas?) which is why people settled there in the first place? So the dust came later as did the energy sources (buildings) and the energy reflective planes (walls and roads).

Yes, there were/are springs there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas_Springs_Preserve It was also a railroad division point. BTW, the mormons tried to settle there in the 1850s just as they did pretty much everywhere in the Great Basin where there is water. But they found the Summer to be too damn hot and moved back to Utah. And that was before UHI.

In 1924 when they were divvying up the Colorado River water usage (before the Boulder Dam, i might note), no one ever expected anyone to live in Nevada. So Nevada got 400,000 acre ft/year. California got 4 million. Utah, something like 2.3 million. AZ around the same.

Note the lack of data supplied with the paper. Along with the lack of code.
“Acknowledgments. Support for this paper was provided
in part by the Department of Energy (DE-SC0005330) and
by USDA Grant 2011-67004-30334.”
Paid for with citizen money. But I guess we have to ask for data and code to be posted.
God Bless Willis who knows how to publish his work.

If the goal is to determine how much heat is accumulating, then tracking maximum temperatures is the only valid metric. Warming minimums can skew the average upwards even when maximums are cooling. Even if minimums are rising, if maximums do not increases then there is no heat accumulation. Using the average that is biased by rising minimum temperatures typically due to landscape changes, urban waste heat and heat retaining materials, biases perception towards warming.
Maximum temperature is the only valid metric for climate chnage

” No uhi moves daily minimums.”
It definitely increases max daily temps, so it likely moves both, at least until the length of night inceases until asphalt and concrete has enough time to cool, at which point it would impact max temps only.

Ah Mosher, wrong again. It moves both the Tmin and Tmax, in opposite directions and on a seasonal timescale. I keep wondering when the day will come when you pull your head out of your rectum and stop lecturing people as if you know everything there is to know about climate data as if you are some unimpeachable authority . You’ve really become quite egotistical since going to work for Muller.

AGW “theory”?
Please quantify AGW with an empirical, verifiable, testable measurement, acceptable by all sides of the debate.
What is the percentage of AGW, out of all global warming? Answer that question with verifiable numbers, and collect your Nobel Prize.
Otherwise, AGW isn’t a “theory”, it’s merely a conjecture.

” Except agw theory predicts increasing minimum.
The earth cools at night. Co2 slows the rate of cooling.”
And yet when you compare cooling to the prior days warming, there’s less evidence of this than there is of uhi.
And an increase in average global temp can be from many causes, so that is not a definitive test at all.

Tony Heller has created a free program that allows anyone to create graphs of any place and anytime using official data.
Just visit his website and download it, and you can ‘speriment with all manner of such comparisons.
it is very interesting…I agree.
In general, the results are just what anyone who is using their head would think…less change farther from population centers and changes in land use.

Me. And I confirm your statement. Hills somewhere in California, late at night, up warm, down cold, up warm, down cold,… at last CITY, Very warm…. About 1974 particularly strong memory of one long night ride… One becomes a connoisseur of night air on a bike… Orchards, especially when irrigated, are dramatic…
Then there was that August night ride from near Chico to Medford Oregon… averaged over [what’s the statute of limitation on exhibition of speed?] darned fast and the rise out of the Central Valley we warmed as we went higher… for a while… about 3 A.M. in still air, no jacket / leathers…

The smart old timers spent a very careful series of cold nights out and about with thermometers before deciding where to buy land for an orchard.
Especially here in Florida, the south side of a large lake is far more desirable, as are places at the tops and on the sides of slopes.
North side or lake and bottom of slopes…not so much.
There are cold pockets, places where time after time cold air drains into at night, and sometimes these are large areas. Places where there are no orchards in the midst of orchard country.
Perversely, it is not cooler on hot nights, at least not by much, and not at all during the day…only cold nights when the heat is escaping rapidly to space.

Earlier I looked for (and failed to find) someone’s experience with a boundary layer on night while fixing a combine out in the field. He was amazed that there was essentially no wind when he was standing on the ground, but a very strong wind at cab level. The transition zone was only a foot or two.

I wrote this in 2014…
Minimum temperatures are meant reflect the lowest measured point of heat release, and as known from UHI, this is variable and not very important for climate studies. Sure, if you are city confined, knowing if you will need a cardigan at 3am may be important for you but not for long term record keeping purposes.
Maximum temperatures, with all of their problems in consistency across various geographies, are the closest approach we have to record what climate studies need : a reasonably accurate measure of daily insolation on the atmosphere at human level on the surface.
Heat release is just not that important.
Good to see a paper on this.
Also, in the abstract “Comparison between JJA TMax and deep tropospheric temperature anomalies indicates modest agreement (r2 = 0.51) for interior Alabama” ….. Mixing anomalies with absolutes ?

What’s the effect of smoke, both domestic and industrial? We have seen a massive change away from coal and wood fire heating over the last few generations to non-smoke emitting heating sources. The reduction in smoke at night would certainly affect min temps and hence urban island effects. What a shame there are so few recording stations remote from human influences.
And as for screens – they were an attempt to provide a standard environment for met equipment so that radiation effects were minimised.

Adding heat-storing turbulence-causing buildings, asphalt and concrete to a desert appears to me as a way to increase mixing during nighttime of surface-adjacent air with air aloft – which causes the air aloft to get cooled in the process of giving its warmth to the night-chilled surface. I see this slightly decreasing daily high temperatures along with greatly increasing nightly/dawntime low temperatures.
Also, I see irrigation decreasing daily high temperatures, due to evaporative cooling and due to increased water vapor decreasing the average adiabatic lapse rate from the surface to the middle troposphere or the tropopause. Along with that, I see irrigation increasing the temperature of the middle troposphere. Effects of irrigation of arid/semiarid areas seems likely to me as better studied in such areas that are large enough for transit time of moving lower troposphere air (850 millibar level, 700 millibar level if over higher ground?) to take more than one day. Maybe such studies could be done at times in places when/where there are “heatwave highs”, because well within those, especially well south/southeast of frontal features at their northern/northwestern edges (in the northern hemisphere), the air movement is slow – especially below the 700 millibar level and more still around/below the 850 millibar level.

I see some on here are arguing against min temps as a measure of GW.
That metric tells us that less heat is escaping to space, and is being retained in the ground (and also the oceans).
To say that only max temps are a true measure of heat retained by the atmosphere is wrong-headed, and more importantly, does not account for that being retained by the ~93% of the energy the climate system holds – the oceans.
(cue “LWIR only impinges on the oCean skin and is used up in evaporation”)….http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/04/can-infrared-radiation-warm-a-water-body/
Min temps are a truer measure of heat retained via a back-radiative effect.
OK, the boundary layer that any specific min temp may measure could well be thin vertically, from a few feet to hundreds.
BUT it is heat that is available to act as a feed-back, whether as allowing more WV to be present in the air (and so an enhanced GHE). In allowing less sea-ice formation and greater snow-melt with consequent knock-on to albedo and sensible/evaporative cooling during the day over snowfield.
Max temps in extremis exhibit a “super-adiabat” in excess of 2C (temp above that at which the boundary layer becomes unstable) and this is often in situations where the whole troposphere is stable to max temps (overlying inversion as is always the case under the subsiding air of an anticyclone). The max temp in question is then very far from being representative of a deeper layer of atmosphere (as in surface heating not being convected aloft).http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/31/
“A super-adiabatic lapse rate occurs when the temperature decreases with height at a rate of greater than 10 degrees Celsius per kilometer. A super-adiabatic lapse rate is usually caused by intense solar heating at the surface. Especially when the winds are light and the soils are dry, heat from the sun will build at the surface. A super-adiabatic lapse rate is common in the Southwest U.S. in the summer, but can occur in most regions of the U.S. in the summer when the skies are clear (maximum insolation), wind speeds are low (limited vertical mixing) and soils are dry (no evaporational cooling).”
Also, there has been no “UHI” effect found that is biasing ave global temps.
Ask Steven Mosher and Richard Muller.

Also, there has been no “UHI” effect found that is biasing ave global temps.

Pay no attention to the 20+ degrees asphalt is over the temp of grass, or that asphalt is still warmer than air temps when the sun comes up.
Since cities never had grass, UHI is perfectly natural to the cityscape.

Interesting. It came into my head to check that:
E of Burlington, VT. 0530 local. Sun not quite up, but light out
Wet dirt not directly heated by sun during day 24F
Grass not directly headed by sun during day 25F
stone walkway 26F
Ambient Air 30F
Asphalt 32F
Concrete sidewalk adjacent to the asphalt 33F
Yep. Seems to be true.

” Interesting. It came into my head to check that:
E of Burlington, VT. 0530 local. Sun not quite up, but light out
Wet dirt not directly heated by sun during day 24F
Grass not directly headed by sun during day 25F
stone walkway 26F
Ambient Air 30F
Asphalt 32F
Concrete sidewalk adjacent to the asphalt 33F
Yep. Seems to be true.”
Was it clear last night?
Because, did you notice the grass was colder than air temp?
That is from radiative loss to space, which was probably below -50F.

“Pay no attention to the 20+ degrees asphalt is over the temp of grass, or that asphalt is still warmer than air temps when the sun comes up.
Since cities never had grass, UHI is perfectly natural to the cityscape.”
Perfectly natural to the cityscape, does not translate into biasing global MAT where the world climate thermometers are located (as a whole).
No one is saying that there is no effect, just that the effect DOES NOT bias global average MAT.
“The Urban Heat Island effect is real. Berkeley’s analysis focused on the question of whether this effect biases the global land average. Our UHI paper analyzing this indicates that the urban heat island effect on our global estimate of land temperatures is indistinguishable from zero.”http://berkeleyearth.org/faq/

Sez you Toneb, and we aint buying it.
Besides, it is hard to see any particular catastrophe ever being cause by less cool nights, even if you believe for some sick reason that a colder planet is a desirable thing.
I like my wastelands thawed out, thank you very much.

Long thread and congratulate you on the first comment that actually has science of merit and acuity. Preponderance of comments seem to be biased towards preconceived prejudiced feelings. For me the rising minimum temperatures speak volumes … the surface of Earth is warming to reach a new equilibrium.

Most particularly the surface is warming near where people have heated and air conditioned buildings, and heat trapping pavement materials.
What could be clearer.
And yes, tone b’s comment did reveal his clear preconceived bias…thanks for pointing that out, although it is so glaringly obvious in his every post it barely needs to me mentioned.

“And yes, tone b’s comment did reveal his clear preconceived bias…thanks for pointing that out, although it is so glaringly obvious in his every post it barely needs to me mentioned.”
No it’s called expert knowledge my frined unencumbered by ideological bias.
The science says what it says. Clearly.
I observed and forecast it’s effects/outcome during my career in the UKMO.
I care not a jot that you say what you say.
I only post to deny your ignorance for others..
“Sez you Toneb, and we aint buying it.
Besides, it is hard to see any particular catastrophe ever being cause by less cool nights, even if you believe for some sick reason that a colder planet is a desirable thing.
I like my wastelands thawed out, thank you very much.”
Yes, I’m sure you do.
That’s why I look upon certain denizens on here as being consumed by selfishness.

And I think the people like yourself who want to return us to preindustrial Little Ice Age conditions, when famines regularly caused millions to starve, are the selfish ones.
To say nothing of the warmista’s shockingly plain-stated desire to keep all the World’s poor and disenfranchised billions locked into the perpetual poverty they now face, rather than enjoying the many fruits and advantages of an energy-improved existence, like said warmistas themselves so callowly enjoy but disapprove of, self-hating heals that they generally be.
I shall also leave for another day a detailed explanation of how the world has never remain in a climate static state for any geologically or geographically significant period of time, and so any suggestion that nowadays should be any different, as if we can control such things shearly by dint of our insipid sincerity, is both wrong-headed and quaint.
Humans cannot do anything right, such people believe, unless we all think just like them. and then we can do anything, like dial in a particular temperature for the whole frickin’ Earth…and do it while we dismantle our economic and energy infrastructure…then the planet will do just what we want and we can bend it to our will.
Warmista jackassery does not get anymore half-witted than that, now does it?

…tone b’s comment did reveal his clear preconceived bias…
Yes, and except for his sockpuppet sidekick, toneb is almost all alone.
This site has more than 270 MILLION unique views in less than 10 years. And more than 1.75 million reader comments! All alarmist blogs combined don’t even come close. And those readers and commenters tend to be highly educated in the hard sciences.
About 97% of those readers and comments are by scientific skeptics. Truthfully, it’s very doubtful if even 3% are from the climate alarmist cult. So there’s your “consensus” — about 30 : 1 in favor of skeptics over alarmists.
As Einstein, Feynman, Popper and Langmuir all pointed out: if your theory is contradicted by observations, your theory is “WRONG.”
Feynman added: “That’s all there is to it.”
The “theory” (actually, it’s just a measurement-free conjecture) that CO2 is the control knob of the planet’s temperature is contradicted by almost twenty years of flat temperatures, as CO2 continues its steady rise.
Over the past century, almost half the decades showed global cooling, despite ever more CO2.
The belief system of the climate alarmist crowd has been debunked by the abject failure of their conjecture. But not being skeptics, they cannot admit that they were flat wrong.
Worse, they cannot admit that the hated skeptics were right all along. But that’s what Planet Earth is telling us. The CO2=CAGW conjecture is a total failure. But being a religion and not science, CAGW is still around causing problems.

Always entertaining to see non-scientists try and make fun of scientists who know more than them. Your pleonastic jeremiad of prejudiced feelings does nothing for your pugnacious and tenacious gainsaying. It does suggest that you are intellectually and scientifically inept and embarrasses genuine skeptics. You were not asked to respond to me. I’m sorry you have Pavlovian reflexes of inferiority and insecurity, there is help available if you need a cure. Try a dopamine boost. Now go play charades with other friends.

How arrogant for a someone pushing a failed scientific concept. Prediction is the hallmark of any scientific theory. Not one prediction has occurred. How are you claiming that you know more? AGW has so many flaws, that it’s being led by a group of incompetent individuals or is just down right fraud. Being that the amount of co2 has gone steady up year over year, recently increasing a billion metric tons a year, how is that the actual temperature is below the lowest forecast model? How is it that a paper published in 2001 has the half life of co2 at 38 years not hundred of years as the IPCC claims. I am certain that the rise in ppm/v per year bears this out, along with the current sink rates. Have you redone the math that has the sun at 1368 w/m^2 in 2006 and they are now stating that it has always been 1360 w/m^2. How does that affect the your projections? There is very little that you can offer in this field that I can’t shred. CAGW people believe what they want to believe based on faith, not on science. CAGW will twist, distort and claim that certain scientific principles work in complete opposition to well established laws. Or that some micro effect becomes so large as override the underlying principle. The IPCC can’t even remember it’s own research that contradicts itself. Over the years the other thing CAGW people do is to run the conversation down dead end topics. You believe that the heat is retained in large quantities, the math by several different means shows the heat that is retained is no more than background noise. It’s been posted here by others. It is redundant. I have it generously at 3 % of, what might be considered warming, observed.
Furthermore, it has been shown through historical data the warming is generally good for mankind, if that turns out to be the case. Cold is not, and has never been favorable to life on this planet. For the last nearly 20 years there has been no correlation between co2 and temperatures. Since I lived through and had input during, what the IPCC calls ” not a cold period”, during the 1970s, global cooling is scary. They claim it was a popular media myth and not in any scientific magazine. It was, it was at least in Science News. Running out of food happens a lot faster than you can imagine. Some religious groups keep a year supply on hand. Do you know how much food was on the shelves 60 miles from the impact of hurricane sandy? None!

You were not asked to respond to me especially with off-topic junk science. I’m sorry you have Pavlovian reflexes of insecurity and inferiority, there is help available if you need a cure. Try a dopamine boost. Now go play charades with other friends.

You think your insults bother me, I’ve been called worse. Since you seem to be on a science kick, or saying that others are not, where is the scientific argument in any of the questions that I ask? Instead, you seem to want to pull others down to your self degrading level. It only reflects negatively on you.

Your claims of fallacy are a subset of the ‘Appeal to Authority’ logical fallacy: appealing to corrupted authorities that have no real connection to the subject.
Furthermore, it doesn’t apply to the multiple awards for this “Best Science” site. All your comment shows is green-eyed jealousy over the HUGE site traffic here. Hey, even you use it!

Multiple awards but not one from an accredited scientific organization, internationally recognized professional body, association or foundation, if your list is accurate. I find that very strange that a “science site and source” has no scientific accreditation. Care to explicate?

In your dreams. The truth is not in you.
And you never answer my repeated challenge to produce empirical, testable measurements of AGW. With you, it’s always ad hominem, never science. Because ad-homs are all you’ve got.
And where’s your pal? Seems an impostor was using his name, and got modded out of existence.
One characteristic of the alarmist cult: they almost never honestly man up and use their real names. Isn’t that right, “Morose”?

When you lose a point is it your proclivity to divert and deflect off-topic? I doubt whether we will ever have a scientific discussion as that would be akin to getting you to understand Sanskrit if your comments accurately represent your acumen.

rishrac,
‘Morose’ has got nothin’ but his juvenile ad-homs. I’ve asked hims several times for measurements of the thing he’s just sure must exist and be ready to pounce on us, but he always deflects.
It’s clear that morose Lester has zero understanding of either the hard sciences, or of the Scientific Method, or Occam’s Razor, or of the climate Null Hypothesis — which has never been falsified. I doubt if he even understands what that means.
Lester is just another ignorant site pest, trying to divert attention from what skeptics are trying to find: scientific knowledge.

‘Morose’ has got nothin’ but his juvenile ad-homs. I’ve asked hims several times for measurements of the thing he’s just sure must exist and be ready to pounce on us, but he always deflects.
It’s clear that Lester Morose has no understanding of either the hard sciences, or of the Scientific Method, or Occam’s Razpr, or of the climate Null Hypothesis.
He’s just another ignorant site pest, trying to divert attention from what skeptics are trying to find: scientific knowledge.

‘Morose’ has got nothin’ but his juvenile ad-homs. I’ve asked hims several times for measurements of the thing he’s just sure must exist and be ready to pounce on us, but he always deflects.
It’s clear that Lester Morose has no understanding of either the hard sciences, or of the Scientific Method, or Occam’s Razpr, or of the climate Null Hypothesis.
He’s just another ignorant site pest, trying to divert attention from what skeptics are trying to find: scientific knowledge.”
My father, wisely said “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” If I were you, I’d seek professional help for what ails you.

As I said, I’ve been called a lot worse. But I see we are back to saying I need help.
Following the hand out for leading skeptics down the golden path, are we? You’re my favorite kind of person to convert to a skeptic. All the the things you’ve been taught about skeptics is wrong. There is a great deal of science here. There are quite a few people on this site that were AGW people who have since become skeptics. You re just another in the long line of people being churned out of some institution, hard core, not thinking. Every thing you’ve done has been done before, like 2001. For instance, an appeal to authority, or name calling, or telling people that have valid questions and answers that they are sick, the list goes on.
The vile rhetoric only confirmed that if CAGW couldn’t win via argument, then by personal degrading. Nothing could be clearer to a skeptic than to win by using science, and that in my mind has already been done. It’s just a matter of time before CAGW is “swept into the dust bin of history”.

You are riddled with baggage and I am not interested in your neuroses. Acquiesce and move on as I need smarter, more competent, honest and knowledgeable conversation grounded in reality as a minimum and not a delusional off-topic ramble about junk science mingled with your personal insecurities, prejudiced feelings and shortcomings.

The math in 2008 used the 1368W/m^2, which was used to under the rise in temperature as 0.5 C. Recently from SORCE, the number dived and made news. It is also highlighted here at wattsup up. Now the solar constant is regarded at 1360 w/m^2. Now that number 1368 is regarded as an error and the constant was and has been around 1360. So 1360, if you do the math, reduces the warming from 1.2 K to 0.8 K. That is 33%. That drops the warming that was reported by the IPCC from 0.5 to 0.335. That is way outside the error range.
Also highlighted here was the research that half of the warming was by El Nino. The people that reported that were not skeptics. That would lower the warming from co2 from 0.5 to 0.25, which was debated by both sides. However, the co2 record seems not to be in error. And until i see what the rate of rise in co2 was last year and this year, El Nino seems to release a lot of co2, in addition to heat. Up until 2014 the highest year on record was 1998 at 2.93 ppm/v. That’s in spite of the fact that record amounts of co2 were produced in the following years. Whether you look at the temperature record or this record, the theory of AGW is in error. In the rebuttal to the IPCC in 2001, it was shown that the half life of co2 is 38 years. Not hundreds of years as the IPCC says. If you look at the last 10 years of the sinking rate and the net amount that has ended up in the atmosphere, I get more like 20 years. Which is a confirmation. The IPCC dismissed this in 2001. However, whatever the real half life is, it is certainly wrong that co2 last hundreds of years. The IPCC statement on this is incorrect.
You can either accept the fact that AGW is wrong, or you can argue your side. An appeal to authority or calling me names will not change the above analysis.
You can also say you will not change your mind no matter what. Which brings up, why are you here?

I’m truly not interested in discussing your unsolicited attempt to proselytize junk science. When, and if, I want you to discuss science with me I’ll post an invitation. Acquiesce and move on and find other friends to play charades with you. I sincerely wish you the best.
[Reply: in that case, you are invited to Move On. There are plenty of alarmist blogs that like science-free, non-stop insulting comments like yours. This isn’t that site. -mod]

So kind of you. Junk science? Hardly. The best any of CAGW people can do is to try to minimize whatever questions I have. After 10 or 15 years they finally have to admit that yes there was a MWP and a LIA. But, not that warm or cold, so they say. It may take them another 10 or 15 years to admit that is was warmer during the MWP than now, and certainly a lot colder during the LIA. There were valleys in France that had glaciers in them that are now populated.
And no, it wasn’t local as the IPCC first claimed.

Science when done sans hysterical whining will always prevail. Your silly jumbled junk science sound bites espoused better than you and articulated by the well-known contrarians, Drs. Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, and William Happer as expert witnesses, got soundly refuted in a Minnesota Court by science recently (4/15/16). Your eminent team relying extensively on non-peer-reviewed reports, WUWT, Think Tank Mumbo Jumbo (Cato, Heartland, etc.) got their butts handed to them such that cost of carbon pollution per ton will increase from $0.44 – 4.53 to $11 – 57. The salient points from the judicial conclusions are:22. The Administrative Law Judge concludes that Peabody failed to demonstrate that an equilibrium climate sensitivity of 1 or 1.5°C is correct.
23. The Administrative Law Judge concludes that the climate sensitivity is reasonably considered to be in the 2-4.5°C range.
47. The Administrative Law Judge concludes that Peabody failed to demonstrate that the relied upon process is neither peer-reviewed nor transparent.
Share that with your fellow proselytizer dbstealy. I bet Peabody is not only hurting from the exorbitant fees charges by your high priests but the long-term concomitant 1250% hike in carbon pollution per ton which will be exacerbated as this spreads to other States. Science prevails over religious superstitions yet again!

You have it backwards, the religion is AGW. American law, the best justice money can buy. You haven’t said one thing that makes any sense. When the observations don’t match the predictions, the theory is wrong. Not one prediction made by AGW has even remotely stood. It’s a shell game of “could”, ” if”, and ” mays”. The objective isn’t the concern or welfare of people or the planet, it’s the destruction of western civilization.
Further, in any response you’ve made, you haven’t addressed one question on science, instead calling them ” silly”. Instead, all you do is follow the handout from the year 2000 on how to deal with skeptics. I have one. Everything you are doing is classic AGW religion.

rishrac says:You have it backwards, the religion is AGW. American law, the best justice money can buy. You haven’t said one thing that makes any sense. When the observations don’t match the predictions, the theory is wrong. Not one prediction made by AGW has even remotely stood.
Exactly right. Not one scary prediction has ever come true. They were all wrong. No exceptions.
When every prediction resulting from a conjecture is flat wrong, the conjecture is ipso facto falsified. All it takes is being contradicted by observations once, and the conjecture is debunked. CAGW has been repeatedly falsified.
That’s how the Scientific Method works. Religion is based on faith. CAGW is an eco-religion. Greenie True Believers suck it up. But since it’s been debunked by the Scientific Method, it’s junk science.

I dare you to forgo the comforts of your quilting circle and publish your diatribe in science publications where it will get the treatment and contempt it rightly deserves. Or you could produce a movie with Sarah Palin as your expert climate scientist. Or maybe Watts wants to join you when you leave your quilting circle and add his name and co-author your Nobel winning articles?

I dare you to produce a measurement quantifying AGW. That’s what the entire debate is about. But that would require you to discuss facts and evidence — verifiable quanta that you have consistently avoided.
If you can produce a verifiable, empirical and testable measurement quantifying AGW out of all global warming, you win the debate. Not only that, but you will be the first.
But so far, all you’ve got is bluster. Zero science. No measurements.
Your comments all follow the same pattern:Logical Fallacies:
The Ad Hominem Argument (also, “Personal attack,” “Poisoning the well.”): The fallacy of attempting to refute an argument by attacking the opposition’s personal character or reputation… Also applies to cases where valid opposing evidence and arguments are brushed aside without comment or consideration, as simply not worth arguing about…
That’s why in an honest science debate, you lose. QED

Morose,
You’re not even intelligent enough to post correctly (6:26 pm). What you meant to do was put my name in place of yours — like I did to you a day ago — but you blew it.
And once again, you have no science as usual. And your father raised a dope.
Finally, since you presume that an “Administrative Law” judge knows more hard science than internationally respected climatologists with hundreds of peer reviewed papers on this very subject, then you are simply a fool. QED

I will comment about science when I see sound knowledgeable science. I have only complimented and commented on the (very) few scientific comments of merit amongst the plethora of junk. You have the sads because your babble received no comments. No trophy for you but you get a participation ribbon for your hair. Acquiesce and move on as I need smarter, more competent, honest and knowledgeable conversation grounded in reality as a minimum and not delusional off-topic ramble about junk science mingled with your personal insecurities and inferiority complexes to assuage what appears to be a long history of prejudiced feelings and shortcomings. I wish you well and be aware that I’m not interested at all in your proselytizing efforts.

@Morose:
You were not asked to respond to me especially with off-topic junk science.
Wait, that’s not even right. You post no science, you just post ad hominem insults.
That’s because you have no credible science to post. All you have are your juvenile taunts:You have the sads because your babble received no comments.
Ah. But you responded. Didn’t you? Hmm-mm-m? You probably meant no credible comments.
And:I’m not interested at all in your proselytizing efforts.
Sorry, chump, but all the proselytizing is done by the alarmist cult. Your eco-religion is all you’ve got. Skeptics have the Scientific Method — something you clearly can’t understand.
Wake me if you ever come across any credible science that supports the current alarmist narrative. I’ll blow it out of the water, because aside from being an insulting site pest, you’ve got nothin’ — while I have a mountain of credible facts, and verifiable observations.

Morose Lester says:I will comment about science when I see sound knowledgeable science.
Then you’re blind, because there’s more honest hard science here than you could handle if your sight was perfect.
You haven’t ever posted anything scientific. All you do is complain.

Science when done sans hysterical whining will always prevail. Your silly jumbled junk science sound bites espoused better than you and articulated by the well-known contrarians, Drs. Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, and William Happer as expert witnesses, got soundly refuted in a Minnesota Court by science recently (4/15/16). Your eminent team relying extensively on non-peer-reviewed reports, WUWT, Think Tank Mumbo Jumbo (Cato, Heartland, etc.) got their butts handed to them such that cost of carbon pollution per ton will increase from $0.44 – 4.53 to $11 – 57. The salient points from the judicial conclusions are:22. The Administrative Law Judge concludes that Peabody failed to demonstrate that an equilibrium climate sensitivity of 1 or 1.5°C is correct.23. The Administrative Law Judge concludes that the climate sensitivity is reasonably considered to be in the 2-4.5°C range.47. The Administrative Law Judge concludes that Peabody failed to demonstrate that the relied upon process is neither peer-reviewed nor transparent.Share that with your fellow proselytizers. I bet Peabody is not only hurting from the exorbitant fees charged by your high priests but the long-term concomitant 1250% hike in carbon pollution per ton which will be exacerbated as this spreads to other States. Science prevails over religious superstitions yet again!

As I pointed out:You haven’t ever posted anything scientific. All you do is complain.
You actually seem to believe that an ‘administrative law’ judge knows more than climatologists with hundreds of peer reviewed publications.
You can’t understand this, but: judicial activism is not science. They’re not related any more than science is related to politics.
So as usual, you’ve got nothin’.

Thanks. I don’t care about the politics and focus on science. poor fellow can’t explain why his high priest, Drs. Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, and William Happer as expert witnesses, got soundly refuted in a Minnesota Court by science recently (4/15/16). His eminent team of contrarians relying extensively on non-peer-reviewed reports, WUWT, Think Tank Mumbo Jumbo (Cato, Heartland, etc.) got their butts handed to them such that cost of carbon pollution per ton will increase from $0.44 – 4.53 to $11 – 57. The salient points from the judicial conclusions are:22. The Administrative Law Judge concludes that Peabody failed to demonstrate that an equilibrium climate sensitivity of 1 or 1.5°C is correct.23. The Administrative Law Judge concludes that the climate sensitivity is reasonably considered to be in the 2-4.5°C range.47. The Administrative Law Judge concludes that Peabody failed to demonstrate that the relied upon process is neither peer-reviewed nor transparent.
I bet Peabody is not only hurting from the exorbitant fees charged by your high priests but the long-term concomitant 1250% hike in carbon pollution per ton which will be exacerbated as this spreads to other States. Science prevails over religious superstitions yet again!

With all due respect to Dr. Spencer’s work on sat temperature, his argument for CO2 warming the oceans is physically impossible.https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/01/21/can-co2-warm-the-oceans/
A one (1) mph puff of wind overwhelms any absurd CO2 “forcing” for a 100 PPM change in CO2 concentration.
Your post does touch on the truth though. Max temp is driven by summer insolation, wind, and moisture which determines the lapse rate. CO2 = meaningless.

The uhi effect is real.
However, it is undetectable in global monthly data.
We can see our adjustment code correct uhi effects.
You need to be more precise. Sarcasm ain’t science.
Trust me. I know how to both of them.

Sarcasm? About this, ” it’s too hot to cut the grass”, is the new joke around the house. We were watching Warren Buffet yesterday. How hot is it? Well there is a foot of snow, it’s May 1st now and shows no signs of going away. My new excuse, it’s too hot. Or as someone from Florida said who had never seen a snowblower, ” why are they rototilling the snow?”
I think they were really cutting the grass.

Scientists using long-term surface temperature data to track climate change caused by greenhouse gases would be best served using only daily high temperature readings without the nighttime lows, according to new research at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

1) CO2 traps outgoing IR between 13 and 18µ. There is no way to warm anything by trapping outgoing radiation. If the earth’s surface, the radiating body, is 15°C, there is no way for that surface to warm the atmosphere above 15°C (unless the energy is changed in form, ie triggers combustion). Record high daytime temperatures are evidence something other than CO2 is causing the warming, so are the warming oceans. Record high temperatures are caused by incoming, not outgoing radiation. Cleaner air, more transparent air or a warmer sun causes surface warming. CO2 doesn’t cause the surface or oceans to warm, it just traps some of the radiation it emits.
2) To demonstrate the impact of CO2 on the atmosphere, simply measure the temperature of the air in direct sunlight over a highway, then measure the temperature air in the shade. The air in the shade is trapping outgoing radiation, but is shielded from incoming radiation. Both locations have equal CO2, but wildly different levels of radiation.
3) Use MODTRAN to measure the impact on the lower 100m of the atmosphere, the area where all ground-measurements are located, of CO2. You will see that CO2 has no measurable impact on the temperature near the earth’s surface, zero, for the relevant ranges of CO2. I repeat, zero, even for a doubling of CO2.

the team also found daytime high temperature data is less likely to be contaminated by surface issues — such as deforestation, construction, paving and irrigation — than nighttime low temperatures.

1) Yep, incoming radiation, which is transparent to CO2 is warming the earth. Radiation must reach the earth’s surface to warm it, that is a simple fact. Radiation must pass through CO2 to reach the earth, visible light does that. Visible light warms the surface and the oceans. Warming is due to incoming radiation, CO2 slows the cooling by trapping outgoing radiation. The mechanisms are completely different.
2) CO2’s impact would be identified by the temperature difference between the peak day and peak night time temperature. A nighttime reading of temperature would show much more warmth above a highway than the desert surface, not because of CO2, but because the highway is far greater heat sink than sand. It is black and far more dense than sand.

“If you change the surface, say if you add buildings or warmer asphalt, you can enhance night time mixing of the lower atmosphere,” said John Christy, the ESSC director and a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at UAH. “That creates a warming caused by vertical mixing rather than changes in greenhouse gases.”

1) Yep, once again, incoming radiation is what warms things. Turn off the sun for a day and we will plunge into an ice age no matter how much CO2 we have in the atmosphere.
2) You have to control for all the other factors to isolate the impact of CO2. Laying millions and millions of miles of asphalt over the past 60 years has made the surface a much more efficient radiator and sink of heat, and that has nothing to do with CO2. Warming is expected if you change the surface from grassland to highway, and it has nothing to do with CO2.

Because of the natural mixing of the atmosphere caused by daytime heating, daily maximum temperatures are the best surface data to use to look at temperatures in the deep atmosphere. At the surface, the daytime maximum temperature just represents more air than the nighttime low.”

The question needs to be how does CO2 cause a record daytime temperature? It can’t under the GHG theory. Trapping outgoing radiation can’t warm the atmosphere above the temperature of the radiating body, if it could we would have the potential for a perpetual motion machine where energy is created from nothing, or magnified. The CO2 signature would be a narrowing between the day peak and night low temperatures. That would demonstrate that the CO2 is preventing the earth from cooling. If day temperature reached 22°C, and the night low fell to 14°C, and over time day temperatures of 22°C were followed by 15°C, and then 16°C and then 17°C, then you would have identified a CO2 signature (ceterus paribus)

Surely, the point of the paper is not that minimum temperatures, or minimum temperature trends, are per se unimportant to the evaluation of global warming, life, the universe, and everything, but that land use changes, including most importantly, perhaps, UHI, make discerning the real data for minima much more difficult than for maxima. That seems rather uncontentious to me.

“but that land use changes, including most importantly, perhaps, UHI, make discerning the real data for minima much more difficult than for maxima. That seems rather uncontentious to me.”
Nope.
I worked for a few years as a Forecaster at Birmingham A/p (England not the US).
It’s a old airfield dating back to the 1930’s. In that time the environs of the city have built up around it and it should have indeed reflected a UHI effect.
However given calm/clear nights the Met station would often report one of the lowest night minima in the English Midlands.
This effect may actually have been accentuated by the urban effect in stilling warmer air surrounding and allowing the air over the airfield to stagnate more than otherwise.
IOW a micro-climate that was insulated from the UHI.
However on a night when there was a light/moderate breeze from across the city to the west then (although not immediately noticeable) temps would have been held a little higher than in it’s earliest days.

An amusing little anecdote to be sure.
I have a few of my own…would you like to hear them?
Be warned, they completely contradict everything that you have recalled in your biased little recollections of yesteryear.

I will site right next to you and take any test on any day on any subject in the field of physical geography, or physical chemistry, or about any other real science, and bet dinner on who does better.
Winner picks the restaurant.

” The question needs to be how does CO2 cause a record daytime temperature? It can’t under the GHG theory. Trapping outgoing radiation can’t warm the atmosphere above the temperature of the radiating body, if it could we would have the potential for a perpetual motion machine where energy is created from nothing, or magnified. The CO2 signature would be a narrowing between the day peak and night low temperatures. That would demonstrate that the CO2 is preventing the earth from cooling. If day temperature reached 22°C, and the night low fell to 14°C, and over time day temperatures of 22°C were followed by 15°C, and then 16°C and then 17°C, then you would have identified a CO2 signature (ceterus paribus)”
And it is this type of analysis that I’ve been working on, and there is a preponderance of evidence that CO2 is not the source of climate change.https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2015/11/18/evidence-against-warming-from-carbon-dioxide/

If day temperature reached 22°C, and the night low fell to 14°C, and over time day temperatures of 22°C were followed by 15°C, and then 16°C and then 17°C, then you would have identified a CO2 signature (ceterus paribus)”

Maybe maybe not, that is why I said ceteris paribus. The next day could be cloudy and lead to cooling. One would expect however that ceteris paribus if you start as a warmer temperature and add equal energy that you would end up with a warmer temperature. That is why the AGW describes a doomsday theory, there is no way for CO2 to result in cooling. Higher CO2 levels would always result in higher temperatures, and we know from the geologic record that that isn’t true. Mother nature isn’t a fool. That is why she made CO2 to have an exponential decay in its absorption, and H20 precipitates out of the atmosphere above a certain concentration.

Steve, exactly how much of the increase in Las Vegas minimums would you attribute to UHI versus AGW?
Is there any weather stations nearby but without population or development that could be used for a Kim(2002) type study for UHI?

Co2 doesn’t trap heat.
It slows the rate of cooling by raising the effective radiating level.

Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. A thermos and insulation traps heat and slows cooling, that is what CO2 does. It absorbs and then re-radiates IR between 13 and 18µ. Instead of that radiation passing immediately into outer-space, it is absorbed and re-radiated in a 360° pattern. This slows, but doesn’t prevent that radiation from reaching outer-space, it just takes a much longer path to get there.

Holy H cow, there’s some faeries on this pin or what!!! or is it Data Torture?
There is much talk here-in of the temperature of The Surface Of The Earth (SOTE), Stevenson screens, boundary layers and whatever.
Are these things, thermometers esp, actually in contact with, or part of, the SOTE. If we want to measure The Earth, why is a our measuring kit planted in a box 4, 5, 6 feet above, or even miles high in the sky? Why are the thermometers not actually buried in the dirt?
You must try it with one or more of our host’s Weathershop data loggers. Saves a *lot* of grief for your Excel spreadsheet working out averages.
Similarly, has anyone ever left the water in their bath then dunked a differential thermometer in there. (An easy experiment for single men to do perhaps) Pop one side of it in the water and the other hanging on the outside. Try it with the window open or closed.
There is presently sitting on the grass in my garden via a wire out of my kitchen window, a little CO2 data logger. It measures temeparure as well and it takes a reading every 15 minutes. Mauna Loa acurracy it is not but it tells me that CO2 levels in my garden can be 100ppm higher in the early morning when it is coldest than when it falls to maybe 390ppm in late afternoon – when it is warmest. During The Day. Every day in fact.
now what is going on there? Is carbon oxide trapped in the boundary layer, why is the boundary layer so cold, what about the humidity, why has that faerie effed off down the pub?
so many questions..

My bath is the hot spa connected to my swimming pool, and it is always a toasty 104 to 110 F.
Does that disprove your point?
(I keep it hooked up to the solar dealio on the roof, and use a set of boiler controls to operate a control circuit I designed.)

Do not ignore the effect of photosynthesis on carbon dioxide levels in a local environment. As the sun comes up, your grass and other landscaping begin sucking the carbon dioxide out of the air. Depending on the vegetation, wind, and other factors, the drop could be quite significant.

OK…so you start using daytime highs. How far back does that record go? Seems to me that this will make the available historical temperature record even shorter. But then, when you think about it, what exactly are they measuring when they say that back in 1916 the temperature was 2 degrees C lower than it is now? How do we extract daytime highs from the Medieval Warm period?
Nope…the more I read about this, the more I am convinced that all this climate4 change stuff is based on miserable data that is being attributed WAY more accuracy than it ever should. This science is built on a very weak foundation.

Wide and varied discussion in the comments here, but it seems to me the paper is really discussing the challenges of data sampling. This topic can be quite challenging even for manufacturing processes in a relatively simple controlled system. Seldom do I see respect for the complexity of global sampling. It is ludicrous the way we collect, adjust and average temperature data to determine “global warming.” It is ludicrous the way we identify “unprecedented changes” by comparing day-by-day primary measurements with some secondary quantities tortured from geologic witnesses.

This is a good example of the folly of using averaged temperatures, especially annual averages. Vegas appears to be quite a pleasant place with a wonderful 82F average temp. Imagine the surprise in summer when the daily highs are well above that. The only thing that really matters is at the highest temperature of the day what will survive and what will not. You can ask the same question about low temps also. Everything else is just bullsh*t.

littleoil on April 30, 2016 at 5:46 am
Excellent paper, powerful argument.
Could this be extended to the Central England set and also the worldwide data set?
Where can you get temperature data in Excel form please?
_________________________________
You can always open a .txt file WHEN IN Excel. Change ‘type of files’ to ‘all’ and select your File.
Excel suggests dividing into colums by patterns of blanks in the text File.
Of course it’s up to you to control +repair the outcome.
_________________________________
In fact that’s easier done in unix with awk.
Not longer common nowadays, guessing.

If you’re looking for an effect of CO2, look at night when convection is absent and radiation dominates (e.g. cooling rates). In daytime convection rules and bring with it a wealth of confounding effects that even today totally stumps the modelers. This ignorance of the effects of convection is a convenient excuse to parameterize it as trivial and leave a enormous hole for a “Greenhouse Effect” which can then be presumed to dominate the climate.

If you’re looking for an effect of CO2, look at night when convection is absent and radiation dominates (e.g. cooling rates).

Bingo!!! The entire field of climate science seems to be based upon ignoring the scientific method and widely accepted scientific practices. The AGW theory is that warming results from CO2 trapping outgoing radiation between the wavelengths of 13 and 18µ. That is the unique contribution of CO2 to global warming. I never see climate scientists try to isolate the effect of CO2, I never see them use controls, I never see them try to directly tie an observation to CO2, they simply say there is warming, therefor it must be due to CO2. It is a belief, not a proof.
1) Incoming radiation causes the warming, simply feel the effect of a cloud on a hot summer day, or the shade of a tree. Daytime temperatures due to incoming radiation make trapping outgoing IR insignificant.
2) H2O is the dominate GHG, so any atmosphere with H2O in it that is warming is warming due to H20, not CO2. MODTRAN proves that beyond any reasonable doubt.
3) To isolate the impact of CO2 you need a control. CO2 is a constant 400 ppm in the N and S Hemisphere, at the surface all the way up to 80 km. CO2 evenly blankets the earth, in other words, CO2 is a constant. To measure the impact of CO2 you need to isolate those areas where only CO2 is present, and measure the impact of increasing CO2 over time. The controls for CO2 are the very very dry deserts and Antarctica. Those climates have CO2 but no H20. The change in night-time lows relative to daytime peaks would give a CO2 signal, ceteras paribus. Everyone but the Climate Scientists seem to understand this concept.

Cold air cannot hold as much water vapour as warm air: in fact the relationship between temperature and vapour holding capacity is an exponential one, so the ability of very cold Antarctic air to hold moisture is miniscule compared with the warmer air of lower latitudes. This in itself limits the quantity of precipitation that can fall on Antarctica because there is relatively little water vapour to begin with.

One key difference lies in the nature of ocean circulation in the two hemispheres. The North Atlantic Ocean has a strong ‘meridional’ (north/south) circulation that delivers relatively warm water to high latitudes. The Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift Currents are the surface components of a much larger system (the thermohaline circulation) that includes deep water currents that flow back south along the ocean floor (see The coast and adjacent seas for a discussion of deep water currents). With the connection between the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans between Greenland and Scandinavia, warmer seas and moist air masses have a stronger influence at high latitudes of the Arctic compared with the Antarctic. An important effect of moist air masses originating over the North Atlantic Ocean (and the North Pacific) is that they release heat at high latitudes when the vapour they carry turns into ice crystals or liquid droplets in the atmosphere to form clouds (and sometimes precipitation). This process is referred to as the release of latent heat. It is interesting to note that the coldest recorded temperature in the Arctic (-67.8°C) was measured in an area far from the influence of the sea – at Verkhoyansk, north-east Siberia.

That quote highlights another control for CO2, Verkhoyansk, north-east Siberia. Temperature changes in Verkhoyansk, north-east Siberia would provide a CO2 signal. It is equal CO2, not no H2O to the rest of the world. Assuming that H20 saturates the GHG effect, one would compare an area with constant humidity over a time period and measure its change in temperature relative to Verkhoyansk.https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/verhojansk_station_plot_giss-520.png

co2islife:
“I never see climate scientists try to isolate the effect of CO2, I never see them use controls, I never see them try to directly tie an observation to CO2, they simply say there is warming, therefor it must be due to CO2. It is a belief, not a proof.”
You obviously weren’t looking.
But that’s hardly a surprise on here.http://phys.org/news/2015-02-carbon-dioxide-greenhouse-effect.html
“H2O is the dominate GHG, so any atmosphere with H2O in it that is warming is warming due to H20, not CO2. ”
And:
“Assuming that H20 saturates the GHG effect”
No. It masks the effect. Different thing. The two act together.
The effect is greatest at the poles (drier throughout the trop) and in the higher troposphere where pressure broadening of the absorption bands does not occur and allows discrete windows to space.
Above a humid surface airmass there is dry air.https://scienceofdoom.com/2011/03/07/understanding-atmospheric-radiation-and-the-%E2%80%9Cgreenhouse%E2%80%9D-effect-%E2%80%93-part-eight/
“To measure the impact of CO2 you need to isolate those areas where only CO2 is present, and measure the impact of increasing CO2 over time.”
We have thanks…http://decarboni.se/sites/default/files/imagecache/620xH/publications/22562/advanced/fig01.jpg
“The N Pole loses ice relative to the S Pole because it is impacted by ocean currents, not CO2. Once again, everyone seems to understand this except the climate scientists. CO2 and IR between 13 and 18µ doesn’t warm the oceans.”
No the NP/Arctic is hemmed in by land mass.
Not much room for ocean currents to get through. Though the NAD has a go before sinking into the AMOC.http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/images/ce/conveyor-belt.gif
Antarctica is, hemmed in by ocean. And is therefore dominated by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
No, climate scientists know more than you do my friend as is obvious by this post. Not least because you have learned your *climate science* by reading their studies (if you have).

I am most pleased to see a smart, obviously educated, informed and very knowledgeable climate scientist displaying their talents professionally with integrity. You are a credit to our society. Sadly, the mendacious propaganda has fooled the “poorly educated” (Trump’s classification) and perniciously politicized the topic. Most on here behave as if they’re on a reality show acting the part of a climate scientist and remain obnoxiously ignorant. Keep up the smart, well-thought out comments of science and integrity. To paraphrase Einstein it only takes one to prove him wrong, and he’d accept that graciously and embrace it. You have no competent opposition on this thread so I don’t see that happening in this forum. I know as a retired (less active) scientist you’d welcome a healthy discussion and opponent for that’s how science moves forward.

@ToneB, is that a joke? Oklahoma and the North Slope of Alaska? There is plenty of H2O in the air of both those spots, and the different latitude makes it apples and oranges. How about Oklahoma and Death Valley, or the coast of Antarctica and the interior. That “experiment” was so poorly designed you can get any reading you want by simply choosing the right wrong location. 22 ppm CO2? Really? That change literally has no measurable impact on W/M^2 looking down from 100 m, literally zero. Doubt me? Take a look at MODTRAN and do the calculations.
There is plenty of humidity around the N Slope of Alaska.http://www.weatherforyou.com/reports/index.php?pands=north+slope+county%2Calaska

The scientists measured atmospheric carbon dioxide’s contribution to radiative forcing at two sites, one in Oklahoma and one on the North Slope of Alaska, from 2000 to the end of 2010. Radiative forcing is a measure of how much the planet’s energy balance is perturbed by atmospheric changes. Positive radiative forcing occurs when the Earth absorbs more energy from solar radiation than it emits as thermal radiation back to space. It can be measured at the Earth’s surface or high in the atmosphere. In this research, the scientists focused on the surface.
They found that CO2 was responsible for a significant uptick in radiative forcing at both locations, about two-tenths of a Watt per square meter per decade. They linked this trend to the 22 parts-per-million increase in atmospheric CO2 between 2000 and 2010. Much of this CO2 is from the burning of fossil fuels, according to a modeling system that tracks CO2 sources around the world.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-carbon-dioxide-greenhouse-effect.html#jCp

@Toneb, check the numbers yourself, a change of 22 ppm results in an immeasurable impact on W/M^2 looking down from 0.1 km.http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
The entire “experiment” is a joke, and demonstrates a compete ignorance of the scientific method, controls and modeling.http://phys.org/news/2015-02-carbon-dioxide-greenhouse-effect.html
1) Oklahoma is at 35° N, and Barrow Alaska is 71°, both areas has H2O in the atmosphere, in fact the North Slope is on the coast.
2) If you wanted to show a control you would use areas on the same latitude, one with a rain forest and one with a desert. The Kalihari, Great Sandy and the Amazon would be the obvious choices, or Death Valley and South East Asia.
3) Because CO2 is a one way street, all it does is trap hear and result in warming, you would have to show that areas void of H2O, and near the temperature most effectively absorbed by CO2, -50 to -110°C show warming. Siberia and Antarctica. Neither show warming correlated to CO2. The very fact that the study you identified avoided these areas given the available data demonstrates that they are either incompetent or deceitful, neither of which is good.https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/verhojansk_station_plot_giss-520.pnghttp://www.john-daly.com/stations/amundsen.gif

@Toneb, no it doesn’t mask it, it saturates it. You can’t absorb more than 100%, and H2O absorbs 100%. Simply learn to use MODTRAN.http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
As H20 precipitates out of the atmosphere, CO2 replaces part of the absorption that was being performed by H2O. In a way you can H2O is masking CO2, but the result is the same, with our without CO2 the W/M^2 is the same in the lower atmosphere. Only when H2O is gone does the CO2 signature appear, and it is way up in the atmosphere. The signature just begins to appear at 3 km up, and it traces the temperature of the atmosphere at that level, showing that it isn’t trapping much heat.

“H2O is the dominate GHG, so any atmosphere with H2O in it that is warming is warming due to H20, not CO2. ”
And:
“Assuming that H20 saturates the GHG effect”
No. It masks the effect. Different thing.

@Toneb, you don’t seem to be able to grasp the concepts. The oceans and their warmth is causing the N Pole to lose ice, CO2 doesn’t cause the oceans to warm. CO2 also can’t cause the local warming under the Larsen B and Ross Ice shelves. CO2 can’t cause localized pockets to warmth, something else must. Care to explain how IR between 13 and 18µ can warm the oceans? Care to explain how CO2 can cause the localize hotpots off the coast of Antarctica? Care to explain what inland Antarctica and Siberia aren’t warming with increased CO2? Care to explain how CO2 can cause a record daytime temperature if the day before was colder than the previous day? Care to explain why climate scientists rely on ground measurements when they know the impact of CO2 in the lower 0.1 km is totally immeasurable? Arctic sea ice is greatly impacted by the oceans, the ice floats on the water. Inland Antarctica is the prefect control for CO2, yet it is ignored by the climate pseudo scientists.

No the NP/Arctic is hemmed in by land mass.
Not much room for ocean currents to get through. Though the NAD has a go before sinking into the AMOC.

@Toneb, is this a joke? This is a “settled science” and “this effect has not been experimentally confirmed outside the laboratory until now.” That article was published in 2015, and the experiment is a complete joke. Are you telling me that these nit wit climate scientists reached a “settled” state BEFORE they had any experimental evidence? You pretty much proved what a joke climate science is with your post. Thanks for providing me even more evidence that climate “science” is a sham. What a joke, 2015. Really?

Scientists have observed an increase in carbon dioxide’s greenhouse effect at the Earth’s surface for the first time. The researchers, led by scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), measured atmospheric carbon dioxide’s increasing capacity to absorb thermal radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface over an eleven-year period at two locations in North America. They attributed this upward trend to rising CO2 levels from fossil fuel emissions.
The influence of atmospheric CO2 on the balance between incoming energy from the Sun and outgoing heat from the Earth (also called the planet’s energy balance) is well established. But this effect has not been experimentally confirmed outside the laboratory until now. The research is reported Wednesday, Feb. 25, in the advance online publication of the journal Nature.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-carbon-dioxide-greenhouse-effect.html#jCp

“@ToneB, is that a joke? Oklahoma and the North Slope of Alaska? There is plenty of H2O in the air of both those spots, and the different latitude makes it apples and oranges.”
No joke. SCince.
Try rading it.
Spectroscopic analysis my friend.
APples and oranges?
No becasue of the above.
Oh I for got. Your “Dragon-slayer” hand-waving” – “CO2 and IR between 13 and 18µ doesn’t warm the oceans.”
LWIR does heat the oceans. Obviously. As all energy that is absorbed by a body, whether on it’s skin or elsewhere, must.http://moyhu.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/can-downwelling-infrared-warm-ocean.html”
ANd it’s be observed directly….http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/why-greenhouse-gases-heat-the-ocean/
If you don’t like the site then go direct to the paper (paywalled)
“Thus, if the absorption of the infrared emission from atmospheric greenhouse gases reduces the gradient through the skin layer, the flow of heat from the ocean beneath will be reduced, leaving more of the heat introduced into the bulk of the upper oceanic layer by the absorption of sunlight to remain there to increase water temperature.”
And no the energy is not used up in evaporation at the skin. No thermodynamic process is 100% efficient and water below the skin is heated via conduction.

co2islife:
“Are you telling me that these nit wit climate scientists reached a “settled” state BEFORE they had any experimental evidence?”
I’m sorry but anyone calling scientist, climate ones or otherwise, “nit-wits” has my contempt.
Hubristic arrogance beyond words. Individually there may be some, but they get found out. Many on here. Collectively certainly not.
We no longer live in Gallileo’s day.
What makes you superior to climate scientists? just becases you inhabit the *contrarian* Blogosphere?
While you use the data, and the physics that climate scientists and physicists have evolved for you.
They are not incompetent.
They are not fraudulent.
They know more than you.
Obviously. Just obviously. By the vast balance of probability.
The “settled” bit pertains to the unarguable fact that CO2 is a GHG. That it slows cooling when present in the atmosphere.
That a known quantity has a known back radiative effect (Beer-Lambert).
The experiment I linked separates out the back-radiation of CO2 AWAY FROM OTHER GHG’s including WV via spectroscopic analysis.
What is not settled is the nuances of the conveyance of heat around the climate system, not least becasue the oceans hold ~93% of it and can hide it awy in cycles such as the PDO/ENSO.
No, WV does not saturate the GHE of CO2. Try reading the science.
Cherry picking graphs is not science.
That’s been done for you by the scientists who took the data you cherry-pick and the foundation goes all the way back the Arrhenius.https://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
Oh, BTW – I know that you, as most others on this echo-chamber will not be swayed … but someone has the give those less delusional the science that you gainsay.

co2islife:
“I never see climate scientists try to isolate the effect of CO2, I never see them use controls, I never see them try to directly tie an observation to CO2, they simply say there is warming, therefor it must be due to CO2. It is a belief, not a proof.”
You obviously weren’t looking.
But that’s hardly a surprise on here.

I would encourage everyone to save the link that Toneb used to support his comment mocking me as a smoking gun exposing just how pathetic a “science” climate science truly is. The best evidence he could find to refute my comment exposed just how pathetic the experiments are in the field of climate science, but most importantly, it exposes that they didn’t even bother to run the most basic of experiments needed to even begin to “settle” this science UNTIL 2015!!!. How do you “settle” a science when all you have done is run one single pathetically designed experiment? What a complete and utter joke. Thanks Toneb for providing the badly needed evidence that climate science is a joke. Yes you were right, I was wrong in saying that they never run experiments. I should have said these clowns have in fact run one pathetically designed experiment to fool the ill-informed and scientifically illiterate followers of the global warming cult. One experiment, what a complete joke. Is that all you really have? Two site over 10 years and they “settle” this science? Are you kidding me? Imagine a drug company going to the FDA with such crap. They would be laughed out of the office. Thanks Toneb, you’ve proved my point that climate science is a complete and utter joke, and a very very very bad joke at that.
Here is the smoking gun quote that exposed Climate Science as a complete joke. Note the date.

First direct observation of carbon dioxide’s increasing greenhouse effectFebruary 25, 2015…The influence of atmospheric CO2 on the balance between incoming energy from the Sun and outgoing heat from the Earth (also called the planet’s energy balance) is well established. But this effect has not been experimentally confirmed outside the laboratory until now. The research is reported Wednesday, Feb. 25, in the advance online publication of the journal Nature….The scientists measured atmospheric carbon dioxide’s contribution to radiative forcing at two sites, one in Oklahoma and one on the North Slope of Alaska,

pochas,
This ignorance of the effects of convection is a convenient excuse to parameterize it as trivial and leave a enormous hole for a “Greenhouse Effect” which can then be presumed to dominate the climate.
___________________________________
Yaa!
Spares out clouds, particulates as in dust, pollen + other organics, turbulence and viscosity in air, water, clouds, windspeed -whatever parametrized over grid cells with 100’s of km width –
promoting GHG’s dominating ‘climate change’.
Good post, interesting discussion –
Thanks to all – Hans

“This ignorance of the effects of convection is a convenient excuse to parameterize it as trivial and leave a enormous hole for a “Greenhouse Effect” which can then be presumed to dominate the climate.”
No ignorance at all.
The process is far to complex to be explicitly modelled even in NWP models.
It can now be done in small area meso-scale models however.

It makes a big difference here in the forested east US whether you’re in a city or the country. Temps in the low-mid 90s or more were common where I was growing up near the city, and still today. Almost non-existent here in the country now (and I’d guess back then too — thermometers were almost exclusively near/in cities). Transpiration from forests/croplands is my guess for the effect — as long as it’s not bone-dry like the 30s, 50s-60s. Didn’t reach 90F here in summer of 2013 and 14, and 90F for an hr 2015, and 7-10F hotter in the cities at those times.

““Over time this might look like warming or an accumulation of heat in the temperature record, but this temperature change is only caused by the redistribution of warmer air that has always been there, just not at the surface,”
Yes, this effect is reinforced by concentrating the absorption and kinetic warming from CO2 in a shorter altitude profile as concentration increases. Surface LWR is essentially extinct at 100 meters anyway in CO2 bands. The radiative warming was always there, we just bring it closer to the surface.
Interesting to consider which effect, radiative or mixing, is larger. Sparks is correct to emphasize the adiabatic component. When you consider that any temperature metric; low, high, average, is consistently several degrees higher under a synoptic ridge than a trough…

I would not use summer high temperatures if I were looking for a CO2 signature, I would use low temperatures. The impact of CO2 would not be expected to so much raise daytime highs as it would be expected to moderate low temperatures at night by returning a portion of the infrared being radiated into space as the surface cools down. It would act like water vapor does in keeping nighttime temperatures warmer (though not as pronounced as water vapor). So I would use nighttime temperatures in desert areas where there hasn’t been a lot of irrigation or dams added to increase humidity in the area.

Quite possibly so. There are so many land use changes that impact temperatures that trying to take averages is useless, really. Increased farming/irrigation, increased development, all sorts of things can impact temperatures around individual monitoring stations and taken together, those impact the average. Local microclimate changes added together can make it appear that the overall climate is changing, particularly when some stations are used to “adjust” others for homogenization purposes.

” Quite possibly so. There are so many land use changes that impact temperatures that trying to take averages is useless, really. Increased farming/irrigation, increased development, all sorts of things can impact temperatures around individual monitoring stations and taken together, those impact the average. Local microclimate changes added together can make it appear that the overall climate is changing, particularly when some stations are used to “adjust” others for homogenization purposes.”
This is a derivative of the change in temps on a day to day, it’s not been adjusted or homogenized (other than what NCDC might do to the station records).
It’s based on my own methods, explained here, with links to code and raw reports.https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2015/11/18/evidence-against-warming-from-carbon-dioxide/

“The trend is cooling, not warming.”
Agree completely.
And the more one digs down into the particulars, across a wide range of evidence types, the more obvious it becomes that this is very likely the case.
Oh, except for them deep oceans…where all that missing heat is hiding *rolls the eyes*, making our best attempts to find the truth subject to the very few individuals who control access to the measurement devices placed there.

This is the difference between daily rising temps and the following nights falling temps.
The trend is cooling, not warming.

Why would that be? Hotter days result in colder nights? Sounds contradictory and counter-intuitive at first. It is likely due to hotter days being more humid, and having greater upward convection. H20 is an effective heat sink in the atmosphere so it is quickly pulled away from the surface to higher altitudes. Condensation also quickly released energy to the atmosphere, so the later nights would be expected to be colder than the early night. Most obvious however would be that the hottest days will occur during clear days where the most visible sunlight can reach earth. Clear cloudless skies have nothing but CO2 stopping the radiation from escaping to outer-space, and it doesn’t do a good job at that. That is why if you sleep naked in a desert you will freeze to death, but would sleep comfortably in a rain forest.Record high daytime temperatures is completely consistent with falling nighttime temperatures if you think about the physics.
To show that CO2 is causing the warming, the lower line would be converging with the upper line over time, and the spread would be narrowing until the point where no energy gets released and the peak equals the bottom temperature.http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/graphics/photos0910/deathvalleyca-tempprecipnormal.gif

” Why would that be? Hotter days result in colder nights? Sounds contradictory and counter-intuitive at first. It is likely due to hotter days being more humid, ”
When I first saw this, it didn’t make sense to me.
But I started paying attention to my weather, and finally noticed within a few days of each other, we’d have warm days,and then hot days, and the hot days were more humid, but it was where the air mass was coming from, the oceans heat and evaporate a lot of water, which in some cases moves poleward to cool.
These air masses carry warmth with them as water vapor, which greatly slow nightly cooling, making those days warmer, by 10 to 20F in Ohio.

I would not use summer high temperatures if I were looking for a CO2 signature, I would use low temperatures. The impact of CO2 would not be expected to so much raise daytime highs as it would be expected to moderate low temperatures at night by returning a portion of the infrared being radiated into space as the surface cools down.

BINGO!!!! CO2 slows the release of IR between 13 and 18µ to outer-space. CO2 slows outgoing radiation,, it is transparent to incoming visible radiation, that radiation that actually warms the planet. Warming night time low temperatures relative to daytime peaks is the very very very dry deserts and Antarctica is the CO2 signature. Check those data sets and you don’t find a signature, in fact many of the likely areas show cooling.

Looks like the theory developed on the fly in an above post has already been thought of.

I’ve previously commented on Willis’ thermostat hypothesis of climate system regulation, which Willis never mentioned was originally put forth by Ramanathan and Collins in a 1991 Nature article. Basically, it has been known for a long time that moist convection has a huge cooling effect on the surface of the Earth (e.g. Manabe and Strickler, 1964), but the fact that deep moist convection tends to occur over the warmest tropical waters doesn’t really tell us anything about the sensitivity of the climate system or cloud feedbacks.

This is what was concocted above as a theory. Seems it isn’t too far off. Question is how can we reach this conclusion simply posting on a blog and the “real” climate “scientist” fail to grasp the simplest of concepts?

Why would that be? Hotter days result in colder nights? Sounds contradictory and counter-intuitive at first. It is likely due to hotter days being more humid, and having greater upward convection. H20 is an effective heat sink in the atmosphere so it is quickly pulled away from the surface to higher altitudes. Condensation also quickly released energy to the atmosphere, so the later nights would be expected to be colder than the early night. Most obvious however would be that the hottest days will occur during clear days where the most visible sunlight can reach earth. Clear cloudless skies have nothing but CO2 stopping the radiation from escaping to outer-space, and it doesn’t do a good job at that. That is why if you sleep naked in a desert you will freeze to death, but would sleep comfortably in a rain forest.Record high daytime temperatures is completely consistent with falling nighttime temperatures if you think about the physics.

” It is likely due to hotter days being more humid, and having greater upward convection. H20 is an effective heat sink in the atmosphere so it is quickly pulled away from the surface to higher altitudes.”
While this might be true in the tropics, it is not true in Ohio, the hotter days are humid, and when dry Canadian air moves in, the max temp is much cooler.

Here are the Death Valley data. There is almost a 15°C drop in almost any month. Death Valley is a control for CO2, because there is very very very little H2O. If climate “science” were a real science, you would find easily published data showing that the spread has narrowed over time. That would have been the starting point of any effort to “settle” this science. Does anyone know of any research showing that the spread between day and night temperatures in death valley have been narrowing? That is a simple data analysis to start making the case for CO2.
based on climate statistics gathered from 1981 to 2010.
Average Death Valley temperatures
High °F Low °F High °C Low °C
67 40 January 19 4
73 46 February 23 8
82 55 March 28 13
91 62 April 33 17
101 73 May 38 23
110 81 June 43 27
117 88 July 47 31
115 86 August 46 30
107 76 September 41 24
93 62 October 34 16
77 48 November 25 9
65 38 December 18 4
91 63 Year 33 17

More info on Death Valley. You can literally freeze to death in death valley.
How Often Death Valley Has Cold Temperatures
Death Valley winters are considerably cooler than the other seasons. On about half of winter nights, the thermometer drops below 40 degrees. The desert averages seven nights a year of freezing weather, which can occur in December, January and February. Any overnight frost normally thaws the next day, as daytime highs are typically always above 32 degrees.https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/California/Places/death-valley-temperatures-by-month-average.php

” Of course that’s not the same as averaging daily day-night differentials.”
I would love to have a second person do this, replicate my results, but you have to split the days, so you compare the cooling of the prior days warming, a thermal cycle.

That coldest mean winter in 1998 is a real eye opener. As is the lowest temp in 1990. More interesting is the clustering of the peak temperatures for the record highs. That implies that we have cleaner air, clearer air, a warmer sun, of all three.

co2islife:“That coldest mean winter in 1998 is a real eye opener.”
Arg. I misread/mistyped. Temps there are in ascending order. 1998 is 6th coldest at 37.4°F.
Sorry about that, and thanks for opening my eyes to it.

micro6500:
I have the daily max/min through 2014 for Death Valley and Greenland Ranch that preceded it, maybe I’ll give it a shot. You also have to watch for time of observation. If it’s AM then max is the previous day. I noticed that in NOAA’s record temperatures they don’t bother to correct the date for record highs.

” If it’s AM then max is the previous day.”
I’ve done my work with the global summary of days data set, it doesn’t have time stamps, and they might actually correct for that.
But, my code allows me to reject stations that don’t get enough daily samples or enough years , for 1940 to 2014 with 360 samples per year, there’s over 70 million samples.
Imagine a min and max are swapped, the difference will be the negative sign, for the day before, but the day after will also have the opposite sign, which averages out, so I think in the end, it’s not a very big deal.
I have avoided trying to out correct the people who took the measurements, I figure they are the only people who have a clue on what the error is, and how to correct it.
But, if you’re going to try this, think it through, and let me know.

“I have avoided trying to out correct the people who took the measurements, I figure they are the only people who have a clue on what the error is, and how to correct it.”
I’m not sure what you’re referring to. I’ve talked with people who take the measurements at COOP stations here in Arizona who tell me the measurements they submit are not always what appear in online data sources. Years ago I noticed that “old” data from WRCC didn’t jibe with “new and improved” SCENIC “historic station data lister” for a local station. I printed out the two daily listings side-by-side and compared them to hand-written station records at the local station. Where the WRCC and SCENIC readings disagreed, some from WRCC matched the written records, some from SCENIC.
The ranger who ran that station took measurements morning and afternoon and submitted them by telephone to the NWS. He insisted on doing this because the high temperature for the day sometimes occurred after his 1700 observation. Perhaps this confused some of those tasked with recording the information.
I first noticed this issue because there was a record low high listed on the NWS website that correctly listed the high temperature that occurred after 1700 on 19 Aug 2014. When the “official” record first appeared at the NOAA site it was colder, as they used the 1700 observation. It was later corrected.
NOAA lists another record low high at a station a few miles away that takes measurements at 0700. Problem with that record is that it’s listed for 20 Aug, not 19 Aug when the low high actually occurred. Since the previous low high occurred when the station was recording at 1700, NOAA actually compared 19 Aug with 20 Aug for that daily record.

” I’m not sure what you’re referring to. I’ve talked with people who take the measurements at COOP stations here in Arizona who tell me the measurements they submit are not always what appear in online data sources.”
This is the kind of thing, if your looking at a small are, and know the people taking the measurements and have original measurements, great, but the people taking measurements in the 30’s are likely gone, I think it’s likely any changes now would make the less accurate.
I have over 130 million records, I can’t manually fix them, and any programmatic process is more likely to be wrong.

According to NOAA’s records, the Highest Max Temperature record for Beaver Dam, AZ, was tied on 19 Aug 2014 with a TMAX of 111°.
Beaver Dam switched from 1800 to 0700 observations in Dec 1990, after which TMAX at Time of Obs is actually the previous day’s high. So the 111° TMAX actually occurred on 18 Aug, not 19 Aug.
High temperature on 19 Aug 2014 was actually 88°. The record Lowest Max Temperature for Beaver Dam on 19 Aug is 88°, set in 1984 when Time of Obs was 1800.
So, contrary to NOAA records, Beaver Dam actually tied the record for Highest Max Temperature on 18 Aug and tied the record for Lowest Max Temperature on 19 Aug.
(People at NOAA are aware of this issue but don’t care to discuss it.)

“O, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”
The warmist consensus on this thread is suggesting that CO2 should not be expected to raise daytime temperatures. It’s signal is in higher lows. If CO2 cannot raise daytime temps, as many warmists on here are asserting, where does the 33C come from in Hansen’s model.
Are we to believe that without CO2, the earth would be at -18C? And since CO2 is only going to reduce cooling does this mean that daytime and nighttime temperatures would be constant at this number? Because if it never gets above -18C, it would have to stay at that number 24/7.
Deserts and tropics prove water vapor cools. So you can’t blame higher temps (33C above black body) on the greenhouse gas of water vapor.
If CO2 and H2O can’t raise daytime temps, the GHG null hypothesis is validated. AGW is a scam, and the 33C is a gravitational effect derived from the established gas laws as validated by measurements on other gaseous planets.

Time of Observation for Greenland Ranch (now Death Valley USC00043603) and Death Valley (USC00042319) in data downloaded today from CDO-Web is listed as 0800 from Jun 1911 through Oct 2015. This is absurdly wrong, as can easily be seen by comparing TOBS with TMAX and TMIN. If TMAX is 102° and TOBS is 100°, it should be clear to anyone with an iota of logic that Time of Obs is not 0800.
An older data file from another source shows Time of Obs as 1800 from 1958 until it changed to 0800 in 1982. It was in the early ’80s that NOAA started encouraging COOPs to switch to AM Time of Obs.
Today’s file shows a change from 0800 to 2400 in Nov 2015. The station is now automated and is no longer a COOP.

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